Worry Over City Takeover Permeates Election

If Fenty Plan Passes, Residents Could Be Casting Last Votes for President, Members

On Tuesday, District voters will elect a new president and two other members to the D.C. Board of Education who will grapple with some daunting issues -- chronically low test scores, persistent enrollment declines and a new mayor who might want to put school board members out of their jobs.

Fifteen candidates are running for the three seats in what could be the city's last school board election. Democratic mayoral nominee Adrian M. Fenty, the presumptive victor, is contemplating seizing control of the school system, proposing to make the school board an all-appointed advisory panel.

Besides struggling with a possible takeover, the new president will lead a hybrid board, consisting of four elected members and four others appointed by the mayor. In recent years the board, the first elected body in the city, has often imploded under the weight of scandal and dysfunction.

The candidates seeking to turn that around are: Sunday Abraham, a school activist; Robert C. Bobb, former city administrator; Carolyn N. Graham, vice president of the school board; Timothy Jenkins, former interim president of the University of the District of Columbia; and Laurent Ross, the first director of the District's Tuition Assistance Grant Program.

The new board member representing District 3 (Wards 5 and 6) will have to tackle how to best represent almost 50 schools in a large area that is racially and economically diverse.

The candidates are: Lisa Raymond, a former charter school administrator; Mary Baird-Currie, an advisory neighborhood commissioner; Stephane Baldi, a research scientist with the American Institute for Research; Marc Borbely, a former public school teacher and activist who led a school modernization campaign; and Robert Vinson Brannum, a substitute teacher and advisory neighborhood commissioner.

The board member in District 4 (Wards 7 and 8) will face a major challenge in trying to improve a historically troubled area with many of the worst schools in the city. The candidates are Jimmy Johnson, an investigator for lawyers; William Lockridge, the incumbent; Jacque Patterson, an advisory neighborhood commissioner; Jackie Pinckney-Hackett, a special education activist; and Cardell Shelton, a carpenter.

Fenty's school governance proposal is the key issue stirring deep contemplation and emotion across the city.

In 2000, Philip Pannell led the unsuccessful campaign to defeat Mayor Anthony A. Williams's ballot measure seeking authority to appoint four members to the school board. Pannell said he felt strongly at the time that voters should retain the right to elect all nine members to the panel.

Now Pannell, president of the Ward 8 Democrats, says he is open to -- but not endorsing -- Fenty's takeover idea.

"When folks see real breakdowns in the government process, they are willing to give up certain rights and freedoms to see systemic change and something that works," said Pannell, who also serves as treasurer of the PTA at Ballou Senior High School in Southeast Washington. "Let's try this," he said, despite his wariness toward Fenty's plan. "Nothing has worked."

But Gina Arlotto, a Capitol Hill parent, strongly disagrees. Although she voted for Fenty in the primary election, she is urging voters to write in the name of deceased education reformer Julius Hobson for mayor, as a form of protest against Fenty's takeover intentions.